Teresa Carter, mother of Chavis Carter, is interviewed following an Aug. 6 candlelight vigil held in her son's honor on at the First Baptist Church on Kitchen Street in Jonesboro. Chavis Chacobie Carter, 21, of Southaven, Miss., died following a traffic stop on Haltom Street. The officers who made the traffic stop, Keith Baggett and Ron Marsh, said the man committed suicide while handcuffed in the back of the police car. They remain on paid administrative leave pending the results of an investigation, Jonesboro Police Chief Mike Yates said. (ASSOCIATED PRESS / The Jonesboro Sun, Krystin McClellan)

LITTLE ROCK (AP) — Relatives of a young man shot in a patrol car while his hands were cuffed behind his back insisted that he wasn't the type of person to kill himself and questioned how officers searching him failed to find a gun.

Police in Jonesboro, Ark., initially said Chavis Carter, 21, shot himself in the head with a gun he concealed after officers stopped a truck he was riding in. The officers searched Carter twice and found a small bag of marijuana but didn't find a gun until after they saw Carter bleeding in the back of a patrol car.

"If you could find a dime bag of marijuana on a person, you could find a .380," his great-aunt, Cassie Carter, said, referring to the type of handgun found shortly after the shooting.

Local authorities are now investigating Carter's death, and the FBI is monitoring the case. Jonesboro Police Chief Michael Yates said this week it appears that Carter shot himself, but he said he's waiting on autopsy results which could provide more details about the shooting.

In the meantime, Carter's great-aunt said supporters are planning a vigil Sunday night in a park in Tunica, Miss., not far from where Carter used to live in Southaven, Miss. Supporters also have been expressing their doubts about the police account online.

"How do you shoot yourself in the head with your hands handcuffed behind your back? Police are out of control," rapper Talib Kweli wrote earlier this month on Twitter.

Carter's great-aunt said she has been wondering the same thing, especially since her great-nephew didn't seem to have a sad bone in his body.

"It's hard for me to accept the fact that he would do something like that due to his personality," Cassie Carter said by phone from Lorain, Ohio, where she lives.

Russell Marlin, a Memphis-based attorney representing Carter's mother and grandmother, declined to talk about what they believe happened. But Carter's mother, Teresa, told a Memphis television station that her son wasn't suicidal.

Police said video and audio recordings, as well as statements from witnesses, show neither officer pulled his weapon nor fired a shot during the traffic stop. However, police have refused to release those recordings, citing the ongoing investigation.

Yates said investigators have figured out several ways someone could shoot themselves while handcuffed, although he refused to describe them while the investigation was under way.

Jeff Walker, who chairs the criminal justice department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, agreed it was possible.

"It is very, very, very rare and usually it's on a missed gun," he said.

Yet, less than two weeks after Carter was shot on July 28, police in Mobile, Ala., said a man shot himself in the torso while he was handcuffed in the back of a squad car.

That 51-year-old man survived, Mobile police spokeswoman Ashley Rains said. She said officers responding to a report of a domestic dispute on Wednesday found two knives when they searched the man but missed the gun.

Yates, the police chief in Jonesboro, about 130 miles northeast of Little Rock, said most officers eventually miss something in a search.

"Most of them, sooner or later, you find yourself in a position where you missed a knife or a firearm or some drugs or a razor or something like that," he said.

In Carter's case, the searches came after police received a report of a suspicious vehicle driving up and down a residential street in Jonesboro. Police pulled the truck over and frisked or patted down the three men inside. One of the officers found marijuana in Carter's pocket and placed him in the back of a patrol car, without handcuffs, according to the police report.

Carter gave police a false name, but at some point, they learned who he was and that there was an arrest warrant for him in Mississippi. Court records show it had to do with a drug case out of DeSoto County.

One of the officers handcuffed Carter, searched him again and put him back in the patrol car, police said.

The officers spoke to the other men in the truck for a while and then released them because they didn't have any outstanding warrants, police said. As the officers were getting ready to leave, one smelled something burning and noticed Carter slumped over in the patrol car.

He was covered in blood, according to the police report, which concluded he had managed to conceal a handgun he used to shoot himself. He later died at a hospital.